Celebrating 50 years of research, service and performance, the Indiana University Latin American Music Center (LAMC) will host an international conference devoted to the examination of musical interactions between the United States and Latin America.

Titled “Cultural Counterpoints,” the conference, taking place at the IU Jacobs School of Music, will welcome a number of the most important composers and musicologists working on Latin American music today. Taking place between Oct. 19 to 23, the conference includes lectures, presentations and recitals. Performances during the conference are free and open to the public.

“The upcoming conference marks a very special moment in the life of the Latin American Music Center,” said Carmen Helena Téllez, professor of choral conducting in the Jacobs School and director of the center. “While embracing the inspiring cultural shifts of the 21st century, the conference gives us an opportunity to consider the LAMC’s impressive legacy of research, composition and performance. We also look forward to welcoming a number of alumni who now work around the globe.”

The LAMC was founded in 1961 during the tenure of Dean Wifred Bain through a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to establish a major archive of Latin American concert music for use by scholars and educators in the United States. Chilean composer Juan Orrego-Salas was appointed as the center’s first director. Following his retirement in 1987, composer Ricardo Lorenz became acting director and, since 1992, Téllez has directed the center.

Through the years, the LAMC has promoted the research and performance of Latin American music and sponsored numerous professional collaborations and partnerships among musicians from the United States and Latin America. The center has also become the repository of the personal collections of major conductors and composers, including Guillermo Espinosa, director of the Inter-American Music Festivals in Washington, D.C. Espinosa’s collection includes valuable materials, representing the careers of composers who studied with renowned American classical composer Aaron Copland.

Under Tellez’s leadership, the center has expanded its focus on performance by commissioning, premiering and recording new works, including the operas Ainadamar by Osvaldo Golijov and Unicamente la verdad by Gabriela Ortiz. One of these works, the Missa Brevis, written by Mexican composer Mario Lavista and commissioned by the LAMC with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1995, will receive a second IU performance during the conference.